Khushwant Singh

Khushwant Singh was one of the finest authors India ever had. He was born on 2nd February 1915 in Hadali town of Punjab during the time of British India, which is now a part of the Punjab province of Pakistan. This justifies his writings closely which is mostly centered around historical India.

Khushwant Singh completed his schooling from Modern School, New Delhi. His professional academia includes institutes across India and abroad.

Khushwant Singh’s professional run started in 1938, includes diverse sectors beginning with Lawyership in Lahore court where he worked for a period of 8 years as an Indian Official serving Indian Foreign Services. Later he joined as a Journalist for All India Radio (AIR). He was a co-founder and editor for Yojana magazine. As an editor, he also served two most popular newspapers of India.
He had a strong political association as a Rajya Sabha member of the Indian Parliament for a period of six years. Khushwant died of natural reasons at his Delhi based residence, at the age of 99.

His work as a writer can be dated back to the days when he was working as a Journalist for AIR. His first literary work was a short story named The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories, 1950. His first literary work as a novelist includes Train to Pakistan.

The novel was a genuine effort to put forward the ground realities involved in the Partition of India during the year 1947, by upraising the human element and trying to exclude the political aspects as much as possible.

Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan proved one of the phenomenal novels of India. The book even formed the base inspiration for the movie with the same name. Khushwant Singh was an honorary receiver of Padma Bhushan in 1974 and Padma Vibhushan in 2007, though he returned the Padma Bhushan award in 1984 as a protest against the Indian military operation towards acquiring control over the Golden Temple, Amritsar. Other prominent honours given to Khushwant Singh includes Tata Literature Live! Award (2013), Sahitya academy fellowship award, 2010 etc.

There are very few authors in India that spread an essence of words that originates deep from the historical grounds of India and Khushwant Singh is a prominent face in it. His writings mostly take up the varied facets of India.

Khushwant Singh’s last few works of literature before death was The Freethinker’s Prayer Book and Some Words To Live By, released in 2011.